Peter Misselbrook's Blog

Aug 28 2020 - Matthew 6:25-7:14 – The Speck and the Plank

In our previous home, one of my jobs on a Saturday, particularly during the winter months, was to saw wood for our wood-burning stove. After an hour or two working over the bench-saw my glasses were speckled with sawdust and I could not see clearly until I have given them a good clean.

Jesus the carpenter paints an amusing and striking picture of a person with a plank of wood in their eye offering to remove the speck of sawdust from someone else's eye. Amusing, that is, until we realise that this is a portrait of how we behave all too often. We have an inbuilt tendency to ignore, excuse or even justify our own faults while being wonderfully sensitive to the smallest faults in others. We may even see this as a virtue; we have a gift for putting others right. Even as I write, I am acutely conscious of many examples of such a fault – in other people!

Such conduct is a reflection of our own insecurity. Our failure to appreciate that we are loved and accepted by our heavenly Father who delights to lavish his good gifts on us even though he is far from blind to our faults.

Nor are we to be blind to our own faults. Jesus calls us to watch over our own hearts and over our own conduct. He calls us to be critical of ourselves and forgiving towards others. He calls us to treat others in the way we would wish to be treated by them (Matthew 7:12). Just as we long for others to overlook our faults and forgive our mistakes so we must treat them in the same way. More than that, Jesus calls us to treat others with the same kindness, grace, forgiveness and love that God has shown towards us. He has not treated us as our sins deserve. He is slow to judge and full of mercy. What would happen if God were to treat us in the way we treat others?

It is far from easy to live like this. And Jesus knows it for he tells us that the path of discipleship – the path that leads to life – is hard. We cannot manage to walk it on our own or by our own resources. We can only live like this as Christ lives in us and the grace of God flows through us. That’s why he tells us:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened" (Matthew 7:7-8).

Luke adds a specific application of this promise by telling us that God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13). We need continually to seek God’s help to enable us to live the life of the kingdom. It is the Spirit of the risen Jesus, living in us who makes us like Christ and enables us to live the life of secure and blessed children of God that Jesus calls us to live in his Sermon on the Mount.

Lord, help me to keep a watch upon my heart today. Keep me from mean and ungenerous thoughts about others. Help me keep a watch on my tongue that I may not express quick judgments about others but that all my words may be seasoned with grace. Continually remind me of the wonder of your grace by which I am forgiven, restored, loved and provided for rather than being brought to judgment. Give me a greater measure of your Spirit that I may be more like Jesus. Help me to bring something of the blessings of your kingdom to those around me today.

Aug 28 2019 - Jeremiah 52:1-27 – The fall of Jerusalem

Zedekiah's reign had been marked by idolatry (58:1-2). Yesterday we read of how he ignored the warnings of Jeremiah. Today we read of his grizzly fate.

Babylon was the dominant power in this area at the time having defeated the Egyptian army at the decisive battle of Carchemish. Zedekiah had been set up as a puppet king by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He was expected to live in permanent submission to Babylon's power and will. But he decided that he had had enough: "Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon" (52:3).

As might have been expected when a minor kingdom rebels against a mighty empire, "Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. They encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it" (v.4). The siege lasted three years until the people had nothing left to eat and no strength to resist attack. Then the Babylonians broke through the city wall and the city and its inhabitants were theirs.

It is illuminating to read that the king, his nobles and his army sought to flee from the city by night through one of its gates: "but the Babylonian army pursued King Zedekiah and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, and he was captured" (vv.8-9). He was taken off to Riblah, a city in the plain on the road between Egypt and Mesopotamia. There his sons were killed in front of him and his eyes were then gouged out. The death of his sons, and with them the hope of his successors being kings of Judah, would be the last sight he would remember. He was then taken off to Babylon in chains and imprisoned until the day of his death. His fate was precisely in accordance with Jeremiah's word from the Lord in Jeremiah 36:29-30.

Having got rid of King Zedekiah, the Babylonians destroyed the temple and the royal palaces in Jerusalem. The walls of the city were then turned into rubble before taking off many of its residents into captivity in Babylon, along with all of the treasures from the temple. All of the leaders of the city were also taken off to Riblah where they were put to death. "So Judah went into captivity, away from her land" (v.28).

It is a tragic story and one that could have been so different if the people had turned to the Lord in repentance.

But I want to draw a comparison and contrast with another king of the Jews. He also refused to submit to the powers of his day. He also was hounded to his death. His friends also fled. But he was not defeated for the chains of death could not hold him. Jesus rose from the dead as king of the Jews, the Messiah, but also as Lord and Saviour of the world. He is Lord over a kingdom that will never be defeated. He rescues from captivity all who will trust in him and makes them heirs with him of his kingdom.

So be it, Lord; thy throne shall never
Like earth's proud empires, pass away;
Thy Kingdom stands, and grows for ever,
Till all thy creatures own thy sway.

Living God, we thank you that your judgment upon a rebellious world fell not on us but upon the Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you were willing to submit to an unjust and cruel death that we may go free. Help us not to flee from you but to flee to you that we might become part of your kingdom. Help us then to tell others of our glorious King and his eternal kingdom.

Peter Misselbrook